6945 to Win'XP won't sync

10-28-07, 02:13 AM

I've been running Win'XP w/SP2 for longer than I've had the 6945. It sync'd correctly for quite a while (8 months, give or take a few days). The usual routine was to put the 6945 in the cradle, hear the low beeps telling me it's physically connected, wait a few seconds & then hear the high beeps telling me it's logically connected, & then enter my password & watch it go thru the entire sync process.

Then, one day, it didn't work, and I rebooted the computer, & it didn't work. So, I (soft) rebooted the 6945, and it didn't work. So, I rebooted both at the same time & it worked. The next time it happened, I recognized the pattern & started giving it one chance to fail before rebooting both.

Then, one day, about 2 weeks ago, it quit working completely. The single reboot on each & the double reboot on both failed. And, it's failed to sync every day for the past two weeks. The low beeps tell me that it recognizes the hardware is physically connected, but there are no high beeps telling me the hardware is logically connected.

Today, I did the usual round of troubleshooting, doing everything I know. I uninstalled the HP USB port from device manager, but reconnecting didn't help. So, I uninstalled the ActiveSync software from Add/Remove Programs, and reinstalled it from the OEM CD, but that didn't help. Then, I uninstalled both & started from scratch using the OEM CD, but that didn't help. So, I downloaded ActiveSync 4.5 (it came with 4.1 on the OEM CD) and installed that from dead scratch, but that didn't help. I did shut down the PC and do a clean reboot & shut-down between eche uninstall/reinstall procedure.

Needless to say, this has gotten rather messy. Unfortunately, I am my own IT dept, and despite my extensive computer background, I'm at an utter and complete loss.

I'm getting pretty edgy about this because we're about to take shipment on a second 6945 on Tuesday (10/30) so that my wife can have the same thing & so that we can sync our calendars together. We're also on the verge of getting new PCs (with XP - trading in our old P3-866's w/640 MB RAM for a pair of new Duo-Core 2.1GHz w/2 GB RAM), so that may solve the problem. But, I don't want to wait that long because I've got a trip out of town on Sunday (11/4) for two weeks, & I want to have hers up to speed before I'm gone, & the new PCs won't be here for another couple of weeks (until I've been back for a week).

Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
David

Julie · 10-28-07, 02:18 AM

Here are links to articles I written that document the things I do when I run into ActiveSync syncing issues. So far, I've been able to avoid a clean reset:

Basic Navigation through the ActiveSync Minefield

Fixing my ActiveSync Connection Again

10-28-07, 03:48 AM

Your "Fixing my active sync connection again" article really saved my ... day! If you weren't 1000 miles away, I'd ... thank you personally! I'll rest MUCH easier now! THANK YOU!!!

11-22-08, 08:54 PM

Well, after all this time, I have a new update.

Eventually and once again, my 6945 quit syncing with the XP Pro machine. I tried everything in all the links to get it working - everything, short of a hard reset.

My only recourse was to pull out the 2 GB mini-SD & manually copy the files (including the PIM.VOL file, just to have a backup). Since I don't do any scheduling or contact stuff from my desktop machine, this was a viable solution. Things went along like this for quite a while - over a year, actually.

Then, last weekend, April's computer died. Since I won't support two DIFFERENT machines, that meant that I got to build two new (exactly alike) machines - meaning that I got a new desktop machine for myself, also.

It was really nice to go from the 866 mhz Intel Pentium III machine with 640 mb RAM to a 3GhZ AMD Athalon with 8 GB RAM (kept the same hard drives, for a while, about to remove the IDEs & install SATAs).

I can't believe how much faster the Internet is, and especially how much faster my MS-Office apps load. But, the real benefit is that my 6945 suddenly started syncing with the desktop machine - all on it's own and without me jumping through any hoops.

Now, I know this is an "extreme" solution for something like syncing the PPC. But, it worked and without any loss of data!

Now, my NEXT project will be to build a Linux server. I'm doing that next weekend - Thanksgiving - after the case & 5 hdd's (4 250 GB drives RAIDed & one 80 GB HDD for the Linux OS) arrive. It'll be the same motherboard & RAM as we have on the desktops (comes with RAID built-in). So, it'll be interesting to see if I can get the PPC to sync up through my desktop to folders on the network server!